Voter Suppression/Election Integrity

[GreyhoundFan]

11 hours in line to vote is insane.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Becky]

42 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

11 hours in line to vote is insane.

 

This is a disgrace!  Once again the US is shamed on the world stage. This is all on the Republicans, damn them. 

[GreyhoundFan]

97% have registered. How many will be turned away by repug suppression efforts?

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[47of74]

I hope these kluxers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law

Quote

Shelbyville residents are seeing more Ku Klux Klan propaganda appearing around town. 

On Sunday, Breana Green found a neighbor’s yard sign for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign had been disturbed. She then noticed the yard was littered with business cards saying the KKK had paid “a social visit,” with a warning that the next visit could be “a business call.” 

The family is white, but Green says they still feel like it’s an act of intimidation.

“I can’t imagine the folks in Shelbyville who are people of color, how they are feeling. They must be feeling really scared. And I want to make sure the community comes together to make them feel like they are welcome.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Disgusting assholes: "Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’"

Spoiler

As the presidential campaign entered its final stages, a fresh-faced Republican activist named Charlie Kirk stepped into the spotlight at a closed-door gathering of leading conservatives and shared his delight about an impact of the coronavirus pandemic: the disruption of America’s universities. So many campuses had closed, he said, that up to a half-million left-leaning students probably would not vote.

“So, please keep the campuses closed,” Kirk, 26, said in August as the audience cheered, according to video of the event obtained by The Washington Post. “Like, it’s a great thing.”

The gathering in Northern Virginia was organized by the Council for National Policy, a little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them. Members include Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to President Trump who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to support conservative causes and the nominations of conservative federal judges.

Videos provided to The Post — covering dozens of hours of CNP meetings over three days in February and three in August — offer an inside view of participants’ obsessions and fears at a pivotal moment in the conservative movement. The videos, recorded by CNP to share with its members, show influential activists discussing election tactics, amplifying conspiracy theories and describing much of America in dark and apocalyptic terms.

“This is a spiritual battle we are in. This is good versus evil,” CNP’s executive committee president, Bill Walton, said on Aug. 21, addressing attendees at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City. “We have to do everything we can to win.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told attendees that same day that the left is “war-gaming” a plan to delay the election tally until Jan. 20, 2021, and enable House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to become acting president. “This is kind of like crazy talk” among political people, Fitton said. But he added: “This is not an insignificant concern.”

Expressing concern about voter fraud and disenfranchisement, Fitton called on the audience to find a way to prevent mail-in ballots from being sent to voters. “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” said Fitton, whose organization is a tax-exempt charity. “But this is a crisis that we’re not prepared for. I mean, our side is not prepared for.”

In an interview with The Post, Fitton elaborated on his remarks. “The left has war-gamed this out,” Fitton said. “And it could cause civil war.”

Brent Bozell, a CNP executive committee member and founder of the Media Research Center, another tax-exempt charity, told attendees at one of the August sessions that he believes the left plans to “steal this election.”

“And if they get away with that, what happens?” he said. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”

Bozell did not respond to messages seeking comment.

At the February meetings, attendees discussed plans for seeking an advantage in the upcoming vote. Two said the right will begin “ballot harvesting,” a controversial technique that involves the collection and delivery of sealed absentee ballots from churches and other institutions.

At the time of the meeting, Trump, his campaign officials and other Republicans were blasting the practice as an abuse by Democrats. “GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD,” Trump tweeted this spring.

But Ralph Reed, chairman of the nonprofit Faith & Freedom Coalition, told the CNP audience that conservatives are embracing the technique this year.

“And so our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to White evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”

Reed did not respond to requests for comment.

J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a charity, described mail-in voting as “the number one left-wing agenda.”

Adams urged the activists not to worry about the criticism that might come their way. “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams said.

In response to questions, Adams wrote in an email: “I stand by what I said because it is accurate.”

The partisan commentary and election-related discussions captured on the videos involved members of an array of nonprofit organizations, including tax-exempt charities. In exchange for the right to accept tax-exempt donations, charities are prohibited from actively supporting political candidates or working in coordination on candidates’ behalf.

Such laws are rarely enforced, in part because of murkiness about what constitutes a violation, and because of the complex interactions between some charities and nonprofits known as “social welfare” groups, tax specialists said. Social welfare groups are permitted to engage in lobbying and advocacy but must devote less than half of their resources to political activity. An individual may serve as a leader of both a charity and an affiliated social welfare group.

Some of the sessions at the CNP conferences are designated as run by CNP Action, a social welfare affiliate that shares leaders with CNP.

Two tax law specialists who viewed hours of video at The Post’s request said some of the remarks and planning on the videos could be improper for the groups that are registered with the IRS as charities.

“What was jarring was that it was pretty clear to any reasonable observer that the entire purpose of the panel was to help the Republican Party win in November, up and down the ticket,” said Roger Colinvaux, director of law and public policy at Catholic University’s law school, referring to a panel about health care.

Marcus Owens, a lawyer who led the Exempt Organizations Division at the IRS from 1990 to 2000, told The Post that participants’ comments on the videos raise potential issues of compliance with election laws and charity rules. “I’ve never seen anything like it on videotape and live,” Owens said, referring to the overt partisan coordination among the nonprofit leaders. “It’s almost like a movie.”

A spokesman for Kirk said he was there representing himself, not in his capacity as the leader of Turning Point USA, a prominent conservative youth organization based in Phoenix.

In an interview, Bob McEwen, CNP’s executive director, said the Washington-based organization complies with IRS regulations and does not itself “do anything.”

“CNP doesn’t do ad campaigns. It doesn’t do brochures. It is a meeting of leaders,” said McEwen, who is also president of CNP Action, the related social welfare group. “Anything that’s done is done by the membership, not by the Council for National Policy.”

The sessions are closed to the public, and participants are told not to talk to the media about the group or its proceedings. “It absolutely could be open to the media, except that the media is known to be left, and then creates a distorted vision of their conversations,” McEwen said.

The Council for National Policy was launched during the Reagan administration by figures in the religious right to bring more focus and force to conservative advocacy.

It has attracted conservative luminaries and front-line activists from across the country, according to internal directories obtained by The Post. In the years leading up to Trump’s election, members included Stephen K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. The videos make clear that CNP maintains strong links to the White House.

Some participants spoke of a CNP-associated delegation that meets weekly with White House officials. They said the group, the Conservative Action Project, has helped to choose loyalists to run federal agencies and coordinate outside messages with nonprofit organizations to support administration policies and leaders.

“It’s kind of this little secretive huddle that meets every Wednesday morning,” Paul Teller, a Trump deputy and director of strategic initiatives for Vice President Pence, told the audience in August.

In February, during three days of meetings in Southern California, a CNP member named Rachel Bovard described the Conservative Action Project’s influence in helping the Trump administration select political appointees for the executive branch. She said the Conservative Action Project coordinated closely on these and other efforts with CNP members and the Conservative Partnership Institute, a tax-exempt charity run by former senator and tea party leader Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

“We work very closely — CAP does and then we at CPI also — with the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House to try and get good conservatives in the positions because we see what happens when we don’t vet these people,” she said.

Bovard cited as examples two figures who testified against Trump last year in the House impeachment hearings: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

“All these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Bovard told the CNP audience. “We want to prevent that from happening.”

In addition, Bovard described Ginni Thomas as a crucial link to the White House. “She is one of the most powerful and fierce women in Washington,” Bovard said. “She is really the tip of the spear in these efforts.”

Bovard and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

A White House spokesman said Teller declined to comment.

In another February session, Kelly Shackelford was introduced as CNP vice president, chairman of CNP Action and leader of the First Liberty Institute, another organization registered as a tax-exempt charity.

He bragged about extensive behind-the-scenes coordination by his group and other nonprofit organizations to influence the White House selection of federal judges.

“Some of us literally opened a whole operation on judicial nominations and vetting,” he said. “We poured millions of dollars into this to make sure the president has good information, he picks the best judges.”

Shackelford said he is among the nonprofit leaders now coordinating with the White House to support the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat previously held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In an interview, Shackelford said he is focused on educating Americans and providing information that will help the White House choose judges who interpret the Constitution in a literal way.

Speakers at the August conference touched on many of the cultural issues absorbing conservatives today — sometimes with more edge and heat than they do in their typical public remarks.

In one of the sessions, author and former professor Carol Swain, speaking on a panel about race relations, said that “White people have lost their voice in America.”

She likened the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan. “The Democratic Party is using Black Lives Matter and antifa the same way they used the KKK,” said Swain, who is Black. “They created the KKK. It was their terrorist wing to terrorize everyone.”

In response to questions, Swain stood by her remarks.

Some participants bridled at pandemic restrictions — and the video showed that many did not wear masks.

“You will need to wear masks in the public part of the hotel but not here,” Walton, the CNP president, announced to applause.

“Yeah,” Walton said. “That’s great!”

A state mandate in Virginia generally requires masks at indoor public settings.

On Aug. 21, in a rare CNP open session, Trump addressed the audience, which included acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf. Later that day, Teller, the White House deputy, gave a high-spirited shout-out from the front of a conference room to Wolf’s team.

“I don’t know if you got to know Secretary Wolf’s team, sitting in the corner, they’re just a bunch of wingers. That’s like the most conservative table in the entire room, is Secretary Wolf’s team,” Teller gushed. “Great, great, great secretary.”

In contrast to his ebullience, some speakers at the meeting raised doubts about Trump’s prospects in November.

Nancy Schulze, a CNP member and co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Wives Council, said the lack of a clear health-care plan from Trump poses a “huge vulnerability” for the president.

“If we don’t get this right in the next 75 days, there is a question as to whether we’re going to prevail at all within the presidential campaign, or the House or the Senate,” she said.

Others described an elaborate social media and advertising campaign by a collection of nonprofits — some of them tax-exempt charities — to convince voters this fall that a Republican free-market approach to health care would offer more choices.

Organizers showed ads that feature doctors in white lab coats with stethoscopes. They told the CNP audience that market research found that featuring doctors engenders trust among voters.

“And so I remind people that what we’re trying to do is put on theater here,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of Job Creators Network and chief executive of its foundation. “It’s the stage. It’s the script and the actors.”

Ortiz did not respond to requests for comment.

Among those involved are former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former health and human services secretary Tom Price. Organizers are asking allies in Congress to introduce a resolution that echoes the policy themes, such as the notion of personalized health care, Price told the crowd.

“It’s urgent, but it’s not too late,” Price said.

 

[Audrey2]

9 hours ago, 47of74 said:

I hope these kluxers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law

 

If that is Shelbyville, Indiana, I can't say that I'm shocked. It's in southern Indiana. I went to college not dreadfully far from there, and drove there a few times.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Audrey2

[Cartmann99]

See Something, Say Something map where you can report if anything hinky is going on in your area.

Screenshot of the current map:

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Then I hope they get arrested for voter fraud.

[ADoyle90815]

As an added fuck you to California's Republican party, I just got email confirmation that the ballot I dropped off at the official ballot box has been received and will be counted.

Edited October 15, 2020 by ADoyle90815

[GreyhoundFan]

Par for the fucking course:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So, in addition to lying, cheating, and stealing, now the repugs are getting physical.

"Former GOP lawmaker in N.C. charged with assault after pushing poll worker"

Spoiler

A Republican poll observer in North Carolina was charged with assault Friday morning after he pushed an election worker who was preventing him from entering an early-voting center in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh.

The observer, Gary Pendleton, 73, is a former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives and also a former Wake County commissioner.

In an interview, Pendleton said he became angry at the polling site’s chief judge after he was told he could not enter the premises until polls opened at 8 a.m. Pendleton said he had been allowed in at a different voting center at 7 a.m. Thursday, the first day of in-person voting in North Carolina.

When the election judge stepped in front of him to block his entry, he said he pushed him away.

“I really got upset about it, and I said, ‘Well, what are you doing up in there that you don’t want us to see?’” Pendleton said.

He became even angrier when the poll worker stepped in front of him, he said, because of the risk of coronavirus infection.

“He was three feet from me,” Pendleton said. “I don’t like people up in my face with this stuff going around.”

He said the heightened tensions surrounding the pandemic and the election probably exacerbated the situation. In North Carolina, precinct chief judges are chosen by the party of the sitting governor. This year, that’s Democrat Roy Cooper.

“I think that contributed a lot to it,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind this is a partisan thing.”

Gary Sims, Wake County elections director, said partisan tensions are “no excuse” for assaulting a poll worker.

Sims said while it’s true that a Democratic-controlled board appoints poll workers, they include Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.

Pendleton was charged with a Class 3 misdemeanor, he said, and he is ineligible to serve as a poll watcher for the remainder of the year.

 

[Audrey2]

24 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He became even angrier when the poll worker stepped in front of him, he said, because of the risk of coronavirus infection.

“He was three feet from me,” Pendleton said. “I don’t like people up in my face with this stuff going around.”

I'm calling bullshit on this. Since he's an orange menace minion, he probably doesn't wear a mask and screams his rights are being violated if he's required to wear one. 

[ADoyle90815]

I'm glad I voted and that I got the email confirmation that my ballot was received and counted on Wednesday. People in California might want to go to the local elections headquarters to drop off the mail in ballot, or make sure the official ballot drop box is indoors. Voter suppression is happening even in solidly Democratic states.

Ballot Box targeted by arson in California

Edited October 19, 2020 by ADoyle90815

[GreyhoundFan]

"Supreme Court denies GOP request to stop extended period for returning mail ballots in Pennsylvania"

Spoiler

The Supreme Court Monday night allowed Pennsylvania election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day, refusing a Republican request to stop a pandemic-related procedure approved by the state’s supreme court.

The court was tied, but that means a request to put the state’s court ruling on hold failed. The court’s four most conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — said they would have granted the stay.

But it takes five votes to issue a stay, and that means Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sided with liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Neither side explained the vote, which often is the case in emergency requests.

The order was the latest is a string of election procedure battles waged in the states between Democrats and Republicans. Previously the court sided with South Carolina Republicans and said most mail-in ballots there must contain a witness’s signature, something federal courts had said should be waived because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The litigation is often over seemingly arcane details, but ones that could make a difference in close races.

Pennsylvania has particular significance because it is crucial to President Trump’s reelection fortunes. He defeated Hillary Clinton there in 2016 by 44,000 votes, or less than 1 percent.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in Democrats’ favor last month on a number of mail-voting rules: permitting voters to turn in ballots via drop box in addition to using the U.S. Postal Service; allowing ballots to be returned up to three days after Election Day; and blocking a Republican effort to allow partisan poll watchers to be stationed in counties where they do not live.

Pennsylvania’s Republican legislators and the state GOP asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in only on the ruling pushing back the deadline for mail ballots to arrive. The state court said such ballots must be counted if they are postmarked by Nov. 3 — and even if no postmark is discernible “unless a preponderance of the evidence” shows that the ballots were mailed after Election Day.

“In a year where there is a very real possibility that the final presidential election result hinges on Pennsylvania, the new rules imposed by the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (a body elected in partisan elections) could destroy the American public’s confidence in the electoral system as a whole,” said the stay request filed by the Republican leaders.

The state supreme court decision was based on a clause in the commonwealth’s constitution mandating that “all aspects of the electoral process in Pennsylvania be open and unrestricted so as not to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters,” the state’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in defending the state court decision.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision protected that right and brought much needed clarity to the exigent circumstances surrounding a global pandemic,” Shapiro wrote. “In doing so, that court ensured that Pennsylvanians would not be forced to choose between exercising their right to vote and protecting their health.”

He rejected the claim of Republicans that the decision essentially extended the election beyond Election Day, and said it was a key aspect of federalism that states decide how to run their elections.

Pennsylvania lawmakers said the decision of its state court extends Election Day beyond what is called for in the Constitution and takes away the power of legislatures to set election rules. The changes are tied to challenges of the pandemic, they said, but “the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s own special master found that COVID-19 is not likely to disrupt the November General Election ballot receipt deadline.”

The cases are Scarnati v. Boockvar and Republican Party v. Boockvar.

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief.

Isn't this illegal??

[GreyhoundFan]

This is beyond horrible.

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is beyond horrible.

 

Can't say I'm surprised. These are the direct results of "Stand back, stand by." 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope Mr. Bauer is right.

[fraurosena]

Wut.

 

[Alisamer]

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the election - when (please God when) Trump loses, I'm betting the Republicans will suddenly shift from "no extending voting by mail deadlines" to "wait, all the mail in ballots aren't counted yet! Give them a few more days to get through the mail!"

I just checked, and North Carolina is reporting nearly 37% of voters have already voted as of early this morning, over 2.5 million people, and most of them at early voting sites. I really hope we get resuslts the night of the election. I'm not sure I can handle the stress if this drags out forever. 

[Cartmann99]

7 hours ago, Alisamer said:

I just checked, and North Carolina is reporting nearly 37% of voters have already voted as of early this morning, over 2.5 million people, and most of them at early voting sites. I really hope we get resuslts the night of the election. I'm not sure I can handle the stress if this drags out forever. 

I'm convinced that the 2000 presidential election knocked at least five years off my life.

[Snarkasarus Rex]

Not sure we will know the night of the election, but I think it’s entirely possible we will know sometime the next day who won. 
 

20 years ago we lived in rural south GA so we often went to Tallytown for fun. Welp, we didn’t go anywhere near Tally after the election...so it was the first year I did a significant portion on my Christmas shopping online.